Holmes Group Seeks Closer Ties With Schools

Washington--A history of uneasy relations between schools and
colleges could complicate efforts to create "professional development
schools," teachers and teacher educators suggested here at the Holmes
Group's annual meeting.

Discussions about the prospects for establishing such collaborative
schools--a key element of the Holmes agenda for reforming teacher
training--highlighted the consortium's Jan. 29-31 conference.

In an effort to cultivate closer ties between the group and public
schools, many of the consortium's 94 member universities invited
representatives from their neighboring school districts to attend the
gathering.

Such settings, she said, would serve as "meeting places," where
teachers and professors could engage in original research, hold case
conferences on students, and "systematically cultivate" thoughtful
teaching, through the use of modeling, observation, and feedback.

Ten "case studies" presented during the meeting highlighted
collaborative efforts that could lead to the development of such
schools.

Universities, for instance, have worked with master teachers to
develop experimental teacher-train4ing programs, hired practicing
teachers as "clinical faculty," engaged in cooperative research with
school personnel, and supported inservice-training programs developed
and run by teachers.

But both school and university representatives attending the
conference suggested that a number of changes would have to occur
before schools and colleges could undertake joint ventures as ambitious
as professional-development schools.

'Where Is the Give?'

In particular, they noted, teachers will have to overcome their
traditional--and often justified--misgivings about university
assistance.

"Who changes first? Who changes the most?" asked Betty Pitt, a
teacher in the Charlottesville, Va., public schools and a clinical
instructor on the faculty at the University of Virginia. "Where is the
real give going to be?"

Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester (N.Y.) Teachers'
Association added, "There's a great danger that we'll develop
[professional-development schools] for teachers, and then announce what
we've developed for them."

Allan Black, coordinator of teacher education at the University of
California at Berkeley, noted that when his institution began a
school-university partnership several years ago, there was "a lot of
evidence from teachers, as a group, that they weren't interested in
coming back to the university and being told how to teach. Access and
trust," he said, "have been more important than gross resources" in
developing a sound working relationship.

Time To Think

Finding time for teachers to engage in the same kind of reflection
and inquiry that university faculty members take for granted is also a
problem, conference participants said.

University people "feel like they have all the time in the world to
think," said Ann Lieberman, executive director of the Puget Sound
Educational Consortium in Seattle and professor of education at the
University of Washington. But practicing teachers, she noted, "feel
like they don't have two seconds."

A number of participants suggested that schools and universities
would have to provide resources and change traditional school
structures in order to carve out time for teachers to plan, read,
think, and write.

Several people also noted that elementary-school teachers, in
particular, are often reluctant to leave their classrooms in the care
of others.

"We find at the elementary level that teachers really cannot
conceive of leaving the classroom half time, " said Nancy S. Cole, dean
of the college of education at the University of Illinois at
Champaign-Urbana.

Wrong Incentives

At the university level, participants suggested, the problem is a
lack of incentives, not a lack of time.

"The university itself, no matter what it says, seems still to have
a single structure of rewards," said Ms. Lieberman. "The research
journals win out."

She suggested that universities need to evolve a "broader view of
scholarship" that would legitimate "practical inquiry" in school
settings and "honor, or at least let some professors earn their stripes
by, working with schools in a variety of ways."

"Until we begin to clean up our own house" by encouraging respect
for people who work in or with schools, she argued, "I don't think
we're going to be effective at making these collaborations work."

But several participants said it may take a new generation of
education faculty members--with the inclination and university backing
to do more research grounded in practice--to force such changes.

Ms. Lanier, who is dean of the college of education at Michigan
State University, also noted that despite the "genuinely powerful new
insights" being generated by research, "we don't have a clear sense of
the varieties of pedagogy that will be necessary for ordinary students
to achieve complex literacy."

The problem, she contended, is not just moving practice closer to
research, but focusing more research "squarely on the problems of
practice" as they are experienced by classroom teachers.

Politics and Money

Changing the "unprofessional characteristics" that now exist
in4schools will also require educators to tackle "some types of
political activity" head on, according to Robert Hampel, an education
historian at the University of Delaware.

Too often, he noted, educators have brushed aside concerns about
money and politics that have led to the downfall of prior reform
efforts.

Traditional, "linear" notions of change, he added, will also have to
be set aside for school-university partnerships to thrive.

"So often, we still have a hierarchical model of change ... which is
simply wrong," he argued. "It reflects the way we wished organizations
worked. It would be nice if they were so straightforward and direct,
but they aren't."

'Tomorrow's Schools'

A current Holmes Group project, called "Tomorrow's Schools," is
designed to help educators and policymakers "think through more
generally the organization of the whole school," Ms. Lanier said.

The 18-month effort, funded by the Ford Foundation, will include
university researchers, teachers, teacher educators, school
administrators, and others.

At the heart of the initiative will be a series of six national
seminars that bring together school professionals and university
scholars to generate ideas for redesigning schools.

Their proposals will be critiqued by school and university faculty
during a set of regional Holmes Group meetings, and by two national
forums of education policymakers and business leaders. The final report
is scheduled to be released in the fall of 1989.

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